Mark 13:32

But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

Commenting on this verse, John Wesley said that as a man, "Christ was no more omniscient than omnipresent."[46] Such is an oversimplification, however, because there are many examples of Jesus' omniscience. From this, we conclude that when Christ "emptied himself" (Philippians 2:7); he emptied himself of some phases of omniscience and not of others. As Erdman expressed it, "Of that (the day and hour mentioned in this verse), he who became a man and emptied himself, is voluntarily ignorant."[47] Bickersteth, however, has the most satisfactory view of this, saying:

The eternal Son, as God, knows perfectly the day and hour; but as man, and as God's messenger to men, he did not know it so as to be able to reveal it to men. As an ambassador, he only communicated those things committed to him.[48]

"The full reality of the incarnation involved such ignorance on the part of Jesus during his earthly life";[49] and there is nothing any harder to understand here than in Luke 2:52, where it is written that Jesus advanced in "wisdom and stature." As Barnes said, "He had a human nature; and, as man, his knowledge must be finite, for the faculties of the human soul are not infinite."[50] That Christ did indeed know all the future had just been proved by the accurate prophecy of the destruction of a city, and this binds us to the conclusion that whatever was unknown to the Son was unknown to him by his own choice of not knowing.

[46] John Wesley, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1972), en loco.

[47] Charles R. Erdman, The Gospel according to Mark (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966), p. 197.

[48] E. Bickersteth, op. cit., p. 202.

[49] C. E. B. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 411.

[50] Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1955), p. 379.